5 ideas
| 6855 | Interesting philosophers hardly every give you explicitly valid arguments [Martin,M] |
| Full Idea: Notice that very few philosophers - certainly almost none of the ones who are interesting to read - give you explicitly valid arguments. | |
| From: Michael Martin (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.134) | |
| A reaction: I never thought that was going to happen in philosophy. What I do get is, firstly, lots of interesting reasons for holding beliefs, and a conviction that good beliefs need good reasons, and, secondly, a really coherent view of the world. |
| 6856 | Valid arguments can be rejected by challenging the premises or presuppositions [Martin,M] |
| Full Idea: Putting forward a valid argument isn't necessarily going to succeed in getting someone to see things your way, because if they don't accept the conclusion, they ask which premises they should reject, or whether an illegitimate assumption is being made. | |
| From: Michael Martin (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.136) | |
| A reaction: Valid arguments are still vital. It is just that good philosophers realise the problem noted here, and spend huge stretches of discussion on establishing acceptance of premises, and showing that there are no dodgy presuppositions. |
| 15540 | You can't deny temporary intrinsic properties by saying the properties are relations (to times) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To say that properties are really relations to times is to treat temporary intrinsics (such as my changing shape) as a matter of relations, but then 'intrinsic properties' would not deserve the name, and it is untenable if it denies temporary intrinsics. | |
| From: David Lewis (Rearrangement of Particles [1988], 1) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed a paragraph; he refers to his 1986:204] If a property is meant to be a 'relation to a time', I am not sure what the relata are meant to be, and I agree with Lewis that this seems a long way from properties. |
| 19440 | How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility. | |
| From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this. |
| 6857 | An error theory of perception says our experience is not as it seems to be [Martin,M] |
| Full Idea: You can end up with an error theory of perception, which says our experience is not as it seems to be, as bizarre as that might be. | |
| From: Michael Martin (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.140) | |
| A reaction: This is because of the clash between subjective and objective aspects of perception. It is an enticing proposal, just the sort of thing I pay philosophers to come up with. Given oddities like blindsight, I think it should be taken seriously. |